Shadows in architectural documentation

[Tibor K]

Do you take pride in your architectural documentation? Accurate shadows are a great enhancement for your 2D and 3D Documents. Based on your feedback, we’d like to make shadows in ARCHICAD more powerful and easier to use.

Please, fill out our Survey!

https://bit.ly/3caSsnn

[DGSketcher]

Interesting thread about shadows in sections... https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=70031

I have had this issue in the past regarding having to create duplicate elevation/sections to display/hide shadows (& fills). It may be worth considering in the Shadows review. Given these settings are usually common to a group of views, perhaps the Section/Elevation > Model Display settings should move to MVO setting.

[DGSketcher]

An alternative suggestion would be to move the Shadow Settings into the 3D STYLES menu and rename it to STYLE MANAGER to additionally cover Sections & Elevations. This could also be a good opportunity to consolidate all the graphic presentation styles into presets that can be selected & saved with each view. The Preset Name menu could be easily split between 3D & 2D views. This would then allow the MODEL DISPLAY settings to be removed from the Section / Elevation tools. It would certainly beat chasing missed or modified MODEL DISPLAY settings between views, provide simplified view setup and more consistent presentation.

In VIEW SETTINGS the view style selection could replace the Cut Plane settings which are currently greyed out in Section / Elevation and 3D views.

Opening up a legacy project would require the settings from each Section / Elevation to be saved as a preset and applied to the relevant view settings. These could then be quickly consolidated by the user through the STYLE MANAGER if required.

Just a thought.

[Anonymous]

Makes sense to me DGSketcher.
This kind of approach should be embraced by GS more effectively.
First things first: Optimize Workflows.

[Jp1138]

DGSketcher wrote:
An alternative suggestion would be to move the Shadow Settings into the 3D STYLES menu and rename it to STYLE MANAGER to additionally cover Sections & Elevations...

Sounds very nice to me

[TMA_80]

something similar was issued long ago
https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=33049&p=172942&hilit=shadows#p172942

[DGSketcher]

The attached images are a mock up of what I thought the revised 3D Style settings might look like. Hopefully changing the Date & Time will give an immediate render update.

[Professor Pickle]

Good to see that GS cares about this topic. In addition to the general enhancements and ideas suggested by others I would like to see the following features:

• Ability to control the hue and brightness of shadows, independent of sun/lighting intensity. This will allow for better control over presentation images.
• Ability to toggle ambient occlusion effect for 3D views. Notice the subtle shading on road forms and in the corners of the image below. These effects are due to ambient occlusion. A black & white 3D image with ambient occlusion is particularly well suited for considering spacial qualities of the design without being distracted by colour. This is a real time effect that does not require you to render the image.

[Anonymous]

I took the survey.

I have been using shadows since I first started on Archicad years ago. The shadow make the drawings look great and help the reader to understand the depth.

A couple of comments:

1 - As somebody else pointed out shadows in sections are unusable (for me) without the ability to turn a switch on to enable calculating the shadows using the full model even if the section is showing only a part of the model.

2 - This is not really specific to shadows but it feel it goes hand in hand. I have seen other Softwares allowing a fog effect in elevation and sections so that the linework for things in a distance is automatically toned down - this further helps understand the depth of the drawing.

Thank you! Look forward to 24 coming out soon

[Anonymous]

Done.

[Barry Kelly]

nardo99 wrote:
2 - This is not really specific to shadows but it feel it goes hand in hand. I have seen other Softwares allowing a fog effect in elevation and sections so that the linework for things in a distance is automatically toned down - this further helps understand the depth of the drawing.

Are you aware of the "Marked Distance Area' option in the settings for sections and elevations?
Not a 'fog' as such but it does reduce the weight (and colour) of the line work in the distance area that you set.


Barry.